Without going into detail Keith your description below is highly highly GB-centric and applies neither to the US nor Canada nor anywhere else I'm familiar with... The point about Freeland's article was to show how disconnected from everyone else the super-elite has become... the upper middle class at least in Canada and to a degree in the US is a relatively recent phenomenon -- based on very very rapid economic and population growth post-WWII and until the last 20 years or so still had immigrant/agricultural/small town roots... Also, in Canada and the US you have significant regional issues--particularly in Canada with regional economies, elites, even cultures which don't fit in an easy hierarchy nationally. And that is intermixed with newly emerging ethnic groups who are proving to be very successful in some cases but who are also (in Canada) regionally based. The overall situation is much too complex to fit into neat formulae and again in Canada the short to mid-term economic prospects are fairly good although they differ significantly (along with their political fall-out) from region to region. M
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:28 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'; Arthur Cordell Subject: Re: [Futurework] The rise of miserity Arthur, Perhaps my condensation of misery and prosperity is premature. Perhaps someone else will re-invent misterity when times are clearer! Historians tend not to dwell on the condition of the masses when an empire or a civilization is in decline (if that is what is happening now), but only on the follies or mistakes of the elite. But I think there's always been a middle-class. (It depends on what you in Canada call middle-class. Is it the same as Americans? What Americans call middle-class is what we in Europe call working-class -- or at least we did until recently. Anyhow, what I call middle-class is what Americans would call the professional-class or upper middle-class. So I'll call it U-class in what follows.) I think there's always been a U-class. In Medieval society the rich landowners and royalty always needed a small select band of advisors to oversee their serfs, to collect the rent, to control their soldier-guards and personal servants, to look after money and treasures, personal doctors and lawyers -- and, simply, but importantly (if a landowner was sensible), public opinion feedback in case some sort of rebellion might be in the offing. It was this U-class that grew enormously in the industrial revolution as many new individuals burst through as the new super-rich industrialists. I would say that in this country this was around 15% of the population about a century ago. I would say that this U-class is about 25% of the population now in an advanced country. In one sense most of this U-class are "merely" the highly-paid servants of the very rich, but culturally they are much the same. They send their children to the same highly select schools of the very rich and their young people go to the same select universities. (This is very clear in Europe and I think it's happening rapidly now in America, even if not in Canada yet.) A good example is given by Crystia Freeland who wrote the long article I posted earlier -- "The New Global elite". She herself is not rich but as a top-flight (and well-paid) journalist, she's comfortable when socializing with the very rich and can probably afford to send her children (if she has any) to the same schools as the very rich. Her children would grow up in the same milieu as the very rich and would possibly marry one of them. While the very rich don't have the same number of personal servants as they used to in pre-industrial days today's complexity means that they need even more meritocratic advisors. I would lump all these (the rich plus the U-class) together as one fairly homogenous elite class as against the masses with a distinctively different culture. (Of course, there's movement of individuals going on between them, and there are many "inbetweeners" but this is a relatively small proportion of the whole.) Keith At 08:49 05/01/2011 -0500, Arthur wrote: We seem to be going back to an earlier era. We can see the problems but there is no ideological road map to guide us out of the miserity So we see the problems, write about them, but at a loss to know what to do. Maybe universality and the middle class were really blips in the long road of history. Arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:28 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] The rise of miserity We're now living in a quantum world of superimposed states -- of Shrodinger's Paradox in which the cat is alive and not alive at the same time. Of inflation and deflation going on simultaneously. Of fabulous incomes for some but declining wages in real terms for most. Of enormous enhancements in efficiency but lower welfare for the needy. Of higher skills than ever before in history for some but of mass literacy and numeracy skills lower than a century ago. Of highly profitable multinational corporations but bankrupt governments. A new word needs to be coined -- "miserity". Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/> 2011/01/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/> Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/> 2011/01/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>
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